August 30, 2003

Saturday

Today is a good day. I have been able to do nothing and have greatly enjoyed doing it all day. The network problems have been greatly lessened in Mabee (and I assume all of Trinity), and I also received some good news from my family. As much as I would like to ramble on about the good news, I don't want it on here. If anyone is really interested feel free to talk to me about it.

I have Circuits homework I need to do and I will probably start on Differential Equations homework eventually. But right now, I'm doing nothing. I love Saturday.

August 24, 2003

Personal Observation

I have discovered something interesting about myself. I don't like writing on this thing if another person is in the room. Even if I know that the person will be reading it later, I still don't like the thought that he could read over my shoulder as I am typing it. Does anyone else have this quirk or is it just me?

In other news, orientation is almost complete. Just a few more things to do with the group before it is over. Of course, I still have a large amount of crap I have to do before classes start on Tuesday.

August 20, 2003

Important Information!

Oh my goodness! Isn't this news just shocking!? I can't believe that a person's lifestyle might be responsible for their health problems! The test results must have been fake. They should just throw those experiments away and let people know the truth. Bad genes are the cause of every problem a human can have!

August 19, 2003

Busy Day

Really busy day today.

Started the day off with a good three hours of Senate "training," which consisted of one hour of learning about bills and resolutions and two hours of listening to Dr. Brent Ellis (Is he a Dr.? I'm not sure.) and Dr. William McDowell ramble on about stuff. Nothing against these two (They were in fact semi-interesting), but if I am going to be forced to use official "parliamentary procedure" I want to learn it so I won't sound like an idiot. I will be spending time with that tomorrow.

After a great lunch (Compared to yesterday's crap, anyway. That was disgusting.), I got to attend a FOUR HOUR seminar on "Cultural Competency." I was pleasantly surprised by it. I was thrilled that it wasn't some politically correct indoctrination about diversity and tolerance, etc. However, I was disappointed it was about subject matter that I had already come to a conclusion about: respect and appreciate the cultures of other peoples as long as they follow biblical principles.

Then I got to go play mini-golf with some of the people in Senate. I was last place on my team but did a lot better than I had expected I would.

And my dorm room is partially clean! Still need to get shelving up, however. If I remain in IMPACT for next year, I am going with the people who stored my floor's stuff so that my shelving isn't put at the very bottom of a large, heavy pile of stuff.

August 17, 2003

I'm Back

I am actually back now at LU again. I am happy to be back. Between packing, unpacking, arranging, rearranging, retreats, and (starting Monday) training for senate and Themelios, I don't really have much free time. Of course, my training doesn't last all day so I will get some time and I have a few things I would like to mention/discuss/ramble about for a while. Of course, at the moment I am busy with Penny Arcade.

August 13, 2003

Cube and Cube 2

I recently saw the movie Cube 2: Hypercube. I was disappointed with it. Before I go into details why, let me explain a few things about the original Cube.

I loved Cube. I loved everything about it. The premise, the ending, the characters, the cube itself. Everything. If I ever see it on DVD I will buy it in a heartbeat. For those of you unfortunate enough to not have seen this movie, this basically sums it up the plot: several strangers awake inside cube-shaped rooms with no memory of how or why they are there, discover that some rooms have lethal traps in them, and try to escape from the giant cube. The traps include razor-sharp wire that can cut them to pieces, acid that can be sprayed on their faces, spikes that can shoot out of the walls, and fire-shooting devices. To see more about why I like the original Cube, please continue to read by clicking the link below. This contains details about the plot revealed (inferred) from the movie.

Now, the concept behind Cube 2: Hypercube was equally promising. Now not only could they have death traps but also they could (and rather or not they could they did) have time shifts, gravity shifts (which was very cool and slightly disorienting even for the viewer), location warps, and alternate realities. A new set of characters in a more stressful psychological setting trying to survive. Why was I disappointed with the result? To see why I was disappointed, please continue reading, but be warned that it goes into large plot details and does reveal information about the plot explained later in the movie.

So, if you were interested in seeing these movies and didn't read the spoilers, let me just say that I loved the first movie and can tolerate the second. Once again, the original is still the best.

About the original Cube:

I loved that the movie gave no information whatsoever about the origin of the Cube or any purpose behind it at all. The ambiguity behind this and no common thread between any of the characters (that I remember, it has been quite some time since I have seen it) made the Cube seem to be a device whose purpose had been forgotten about and its use only continued out of habit. For all we know the Cube could be a twisted experiment, a mass execution chamber, or a horrible prison where only those who can escape are set free.

About Cube 2:

To begin with, the took away most of the death-traps. There was a sliding wall of death, a hypercube (I think) of death, transparent sliding rectangles of death, and in one scene there sprung what I can only assume was a time trap. I could forgive the lack of traps because of how the rooms themselves acted. They seemed to warp around at random causing confusion and irritation.

Another problem was the characters themselves. They were almost entirely stereotypes. The "angry-mean-male-with-a-secret" character, the "old-and-senile" woman who I think had Alzheimer's, the "conspiracy-theorist" programming geek, and the list goes on and on.

Then there was a plot problem I couldn't get around. Ok, so the person who built either the Cube or Hypercube (I didn't catch all of that explanation because the DVD was slightly scratched) went into the Hypercube to try to avoid being caught by the people the person designed it for? Then why did that person try to escape the Hypercube at all? I'm hoping I just missed that explanation because of the bad DVD. I was also extremely irritated that they named the builder of the Cube and Hypercube. I liked the ambiguity surrounding the whole concept.

The ending was still good, however, because it doesn't really explain anything and most of the stuff about the Cube and Hypercube remains a mystery.

August 10, 2003

Timeline

I loved the premise. An archeology scholar is sent back through time, then something happens which causes the people who sent him to start to worry, then they send several of his students back through time to find him. That is absolutely fine with me. I think that can make a good book or movie if done correctly. I think that Michael Crichton, for the most part, wrote the plot of the book excellently.

There was one thing about the book that bothered me. I am going to try to keep it short, but it involves the explanation of time travel in the book. This may include some minor spoilers, but I honestly don't know because I am talking about the book and I haven't seen the movie. So if you plan on seeing the movie and haven't read the book, read on at your own risk.

"The ITC technology has nothing to do with time travel, at least not directly. What we have developed is a form of space travel. To be precise, we use quantum technology to manipulate an orthogonal multiverse coordinate change....It means...that we travel to another place in the multiverse." (Multiverse = infinite number of universes)

"Actually, since there are infinite in number, the universes exist at all earlier times."

Alright, I can buy these two explanations for a fictional novel. I don't believe it, but I can accept it for the book and not have a problem with it.

"We'll register them starting as early as two hours before an event. And in fact, these started about two hours ago. It means a machine is returning [to the present]."
"What machine?"
"Sue's machine."
"But she hasn't [gone back through time] yet."
"I know...it doesn't seem to make sense. Quantum events are all counterintuitive."
"You're saying you get an indicator that she is returning before she has left?"
"Yes."

That makes perfect sense to me. My mind works that way, I guess. This was actually the simplest concept in the explanation to me. This next part is the problem.

"Are you saying that when you transmit, the person is being reconstituted by another universe?"
"In effect, yes. I mean, it has to be. We can't very well reconstitute them, because we're not there. We're in this universe."
...
"The person [who arrived in the other universe] didn't come from our universe."
"Then where?"
"They came from a universe that is almost identical to ours--identical in every respect--except that they know how to reconstitute it at the other end."
"You're joking."
"No."
"The Kate who lands there isn't the Kate who left here? She's a Kate from another universe?"
"Yes."

Ok, so you have an infinite number of universes. Naturally, that means there are also an infinite number of universes identical to the one you exist in. So, that would mean there are an infinite number of any person. That all makes sense to me. But, you don't know how to recreate the person after they are transmitted in the way you do it. So, everytime you send someone you are in fact destroying them and getting a different, but identical, version of the same person back? What happens to the person that is sent? Are they killed? Or are they just transmitted through the multiverse forever being unable to reform themselves? This needs to be addressed in greater detail because this doesn't make sense at all to me.

August 08, 2003

A Music Video

Before today I had never been offended by a music video. I have been disgusted (Nine Inch Nails video to their song with the lyric "I want to f**k you like an animal" and that video to that moronic "you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals..." song), but I had never actually been offended until just a few minutes ago.

Because there was nothing else on I was interested in watching, I turned the channel to MTV to watch TRL (Total Request Live, I watch it occasionally to see what songs and videos are currently called the best by the general masses. Usually I wouldn't vote for any of the songs on the countdown.). What disturbs me the most, however, is that the video was in the number one spot. Christina Aguilera and Lil' Kim's "Can't Hold Us Down" had claimed Justin Timberlake's "Senorita" spot at the top of TRL.

The video starts with Christina Aguilera walking down a street in a city wearing a very tight and strapless thing around her upper torso. She was also wearing a small jacket over that, but at one point she throws the jacket off of her. Naturally, her midsection was not covered. She was also wearing shorts that looked more like a bikini bottom with small flaps in front and back.

Anyway, as she was bouncing down the street, some random guy had the nerve to grab her butt. After this horrible display of disrespect toward the femal race, every woman in the neighborhood decides to get into a mob-sized group and yell at a male mob-sized group.

Eventually, Lil' Kim bounces out into the open and reveals that she is wearing a bikini and something that looks like a jacket. I honestly believe that both Christina and Lil' Kim went to the fashion/costume/whatever person for the video and said, "Make us look like whores."

The lyrics I mostly wasn't able to understand. One phrase I heard repeated, however, went something like this: "...I don't understand/ If a guy has three girls then he's the man/ but if a girl does the same then she's a whore..." Now, I think that the lyrics themselves do point out the double standard toward promiscuity that a large portion of society holds today. However, in my opinion it doesn't matter if you are a guy or a girl, if you are a whore you are a whore. (Strangely enough, the video played before this was 50 cent's "P-I-M-P") So my problem isn't really the lyrics of the song, although I do think they promote sex. My problem is with what the people are doing in the video.

At one point a girl is holding a water hose in a phallic way. Christina then grabs the hose and pretends it is a microphone for a short time. She then later holds the hose between her legs and sprays the group of me with it. The men don't act much better. Several times they thrust in the direction of the women and during a large portion of the video they are, I'm assuming, trying to impress the women by dancing.

The video ends with Christine once again bouncing down the street, but this time she is smiling as if she just accomplished something and without a jacket.

I think the point of the video and song was that women should be able to be just as sexually active as men without being scorned by society. I think the whole point of me writing this was to say to all women that if you dress like a whore you are not going to be respected by any man.

August 06, 2003

Fred Quote

The following quote is from Fred Reed's Fred on Everything. I enjoyed it so much I thought I would share it with all of you.

"I'm gonna break something. It's going to happen. Anything could trigger it. A neutered hamster of a high-school principal is going to complain about the violence inherent in freeze-tag. Or some baffled ditz-bunny in a university will whinny about how Frosty the Snowman symbolizes white patriarchal phallocentric linearity. I'm going to pop, and suffer an access of superhuman strength, and pick up a backhoe, and smack'em into gruel.

August 04, 2003

Birthday

According to the clock on my computer, it is now August 4, 2003. Do you know what this means? I'm sure a large majority of you do not, but a few of you might. For those of you who do not know what today means to me, allow me to elaborate.

Today is my birthday. I am now officially nineteen years old. Although I will not be nineteen to the second until sometime around one o'clock in the afternoon, I think that it is close enough that I can say something about it.

August 03, 2003

Flags

And before anybody leaves a message calling me unpatriotic, I have a disclaimer. I don't agree with everything said in the article, but I do agree with a lot of it. Besides, I have been called unpatriotic by many people, so if you can't come up with something original just don't even bother with an insulting comment.

Spiders Everywhere

I had the misfortune of meeting him again tonight. I was reading a book while my feet were resting on the legs of a computer chair and I felt something brush underneath my foot. I looked down and saw the spider running under my bed. I felt myself turn pale and I put both of my feet on top of the chair, even though I knew the eight-legged bastard was underneath my bed.

That would have been bad enough had I not seen a spider large enough to be that spider's younger brother slowly crawling on the bathroom ceiling earlier today. I also unintentionally killed two small spiders while cleaning my air conditioning filter. Now I am going to be in fear of these spiders until I move back to LU.